A crazed killer freed from prison only to murder a pensioner on his own doorstep months later should never have been back on the streets, it was claimed yesterday.

Steven Ryan, now one of Scotland’s most infamous double killers, stabbed cancer survivor Gordon Murphy 15 times with a scissor blade then bragged he was going to buy crack cocaine to fuel his sex-drive.

He struck 11 months after he was released from a life sentence for the torture and murder of high-flying prosecutor Marshall Stormonth in 1993.

Ryan, 43, attacked Mr Murphy, 65, who was described by neighbours as a “quiet, friendly man”, in Glasgow’s Govanhill in December 2014.

He died later in the city’s Victoria Infirmary.

Last night, details of Ryan’s latest crime fuelled calls for killers like him to never be released.

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Scottish Conservative justice spokeswoman Margaret Mitchell MSP said: “To kill again within months of being released demonstrates he wasn’t fit to rejoin society. This is another case of the criminal justice system letting down another innocent victim.

“Life should have meant life for the murder he committed back in 1993 but it didn’t and now we have another victim.”

She added: “It is critical that when dangerous killers like this are handed a life sentence it absolutely means they do not get out of jail ever again.”

Life should have meant life for the murder he committed back in 1993 but it didn’t and now we have another victim

Margaret Mitchell MSP

Ryan – who uses the nickname Sinbad – was jailed for life aged 21 in 1994 for the murder of procurator fiscal depute Mr Stormonth.

Ryan and his brother Dean, then 17, posed as rentboys to lure homosexual Mr Stormonth out of a city pub and back to his flat near the BBC’s former HQ in the city’s West End.

Once there, they bludgeoned their victim with a champagne bottle and tortured him in a failed attempt to obtain his bank and credit card PIN codes.

At their trial in 2004, a jury heard that when Mr Stormonth fought back, he was slowly strangled with a belt and necktie before the Ryan brothers set the flat ablaze, leaving the body to be discovered by firefighters.

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Dean Ryan was detained without limit of time while his older brother was given life and should have been freed after 10 years but continually breached prison rules, absconding once from a work placement.

He was finally released in January 2014 and was suspected of a number of knifepoint robberies of drug dealers before he targeted innocent Mr Murphy.

Ryan crossed a street while walking with his girlfriend to buy drugs and launched the frenzied attack within seconds of encountering the victim.

He denied the killing, insisting he had been a “good Samaritan” by coming to Mr Murphy’s aid after he had been set upon.

But a jury convicted him after seeing CCTV footage of Ryan ditching the murder weapon in the city’s notorious Possil area.

The High Court in Glasgow also heard Ryan was traced by detectives after his girlfriend, Cherie Campbell, 35, who witnessed the attack, used his mobile phone to call 999.

Judge John Morris QC, ordering Ryan to serve a minimum 25 years, warned him: “It may be that you will never be released.”